Create personalized medicine using a 3D molecule printer

Lee Cronin, chemistry professor at the University of Glasgow asked the audience at TEDGlobal this year, ""Could we make a really cool universal chemistry set? Could we 'app' chemistry?" By using a 3D printer and open source design software, Cronin presented his idea - print molecules.

UK scientists have been granted £2.5 million to invent a nanomachine that can build materials molecule by molecule.

Such a robot doesn't — and may never — exist, though it has been imagined for over half a century. But this autumn, researchers across the UK are starting work towards it, following the funding of three research projects by the Engineering and physical sciences research council.

"If it works, it will redefine nanotechnology as it should have been," said Lee Cronin, an inorganic chemist at the University of Glasgow — referring to concepts promoted in the 1980s by US engineer Eric Drexler, who suggested that nanotechnology would create tiny machines dubbed 'assemblers' that could drag atoms and molecules around to make copies of themselves, or other useful devices.

Lee Cronin and his research group are conducting research in cluster chemistry and self assembly, together with other researchers from UK, USA, Japan and Europe.

(Photo credit: Cronin Group)

The idea is very attractive: Using the 3D printer they print the reagents directly into the 3D-reactionware matrix to initiate chemical reactions. They produced reactionware for organic and inorganic synthesis on a low-cost 3D printer, including printed-in catalysts, and other architectures with printed-in components for electrochemical and spectroscopic analysis.

This allowed reactions to be monitored in situ so that different reactionware architectures could be screened for their efficacy for a given process, giving a digital feed-back mechanism for device optimisation.

What does this mean? It means we could print molecules for our medicine, same as printing any object using a 3D printer. Lee Cronin proposed that eventually we could print medicine at the point of need, by downloading the diagnostics apps needed and creating the drug via a 3D molecule printer.

Cronin says, "For me the cool bit, going into the future, is the idea of taking your own stem cells with your own genes and environment and printing your own medicine."